| Pittsburgh Sports Report June 2008 |
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| Cap Control It's one thing to build a team capable of winning a Stanley Cup. These days, it's a whole different thing keeping that team together. Penguins' general manager Ray Shero has done the former, with some help from predecessor Craig Patrick, deftly filling his roster with the players needed to complete a head-shaking transformation from last-place team to Cup finalist in just two seasons. Shero will continue his push to do the latter as soon as Pittsburgh's battle with Detroit ends. That's life under the salary cap. Having watched the Penguins lay waste to the Eastern Conference on the way to their appointment with the Red Wings and hockey history, those fans can't be blamed for giving full bloom to their angst this summer. In just a matter of weeks, on July 1, eight of the players who helped the Penguins finish off Ottawa, the New York Rangers and Philadelphia in just 14 games will be hitting the market as unrestricted free agents: Marian Hossa, Gary Roberts, Ryan Malone, Georges Laraque, Jarkko Ruutu, Brooks Orpik, Pascal Dupuis and Adam Hall. Six others who spent varying amounts of time with the team during the regular season but hadn't played in the post-season prior to the Finals will join them: Mark Eaton, Ty Conklin, Jeff Taffe, Kris Beech, Nathan Smith and Alain Nasreddine. Fleury, the foundation for the Penguins' superb defensive play in the post-season, will become a restricted free agent heading for a major salary upgrade. And the one-year door to exclusive negotiations with Malkin and Staal - who become restricted free agents in July 2009 - will swing open for the Penguins, who had better hold it open with one hand while holding the bank doors open with the other. There's a lot of money to be spent this summer and next, for sure, but as the Penguins try to keep as many pieces of their impressive puzzle as possible, there are a couple of factors working for them that sometimes get overlooked in all the hand-wringing over who might stay and who might go. There are other salary easements on the way. The Penguins were on the hook for nearly $850,000 this season for their final shares of the salaries of Mark Recchi and Andre Roy; with Dany Sabourin under contract next season and John Curry and David Brown handling the goaltending chores at the AHL level, Conklin ($500,000) is unlikely to re-sign here; at 42, Roberts ($2.5 million) seems likely to retire; the play of first-year pro Alex Goligoski at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, coupled with the presence of Hal Gill and Darryl Sydor, might quash interest in re-signing Eaton ($1.6 million); and Hossa, whose cap hit this season was $6 million, of which the Penguins paid about $1.2 million after acquiring him at the trade deadline, seems highly unlikely to fit into the team's payroll after a post-season in which his stock rose very nicely in conjunction with his superb two-way play. If things work out that way for this last group, the Penguins will free up another $6-6.5 million, putting them about $16 to $19.5 million under the cap. This estimate works nicely when you consider that the 13 regulars under contract for next season - Crosby, Malkin, Staal, Sydor, Gill, Sabourin, Sergei Gonchar, Ryan Whitney, Petr Sykora, Max Talbot, Rob Scuderi, Kris Letang and Tyler Kennedy - will represent a cap hit of about $34 million next season - about $20 million less than the projected cap. So the Penguins have cap room, unlike many teams in the NHL. And let's not forget they have an ownership group that is committed to maintaining a championship-caliber team. Some teams have the cap room but not the means or motivation to fill it; that's not a problem here. So how do the Penguins go about spending what's left? Great hockey teams are built strong down the middle, and the Penguins are sitting on an incredible run of talent there with Crosby, Malkin, Staal and Fleury. Crosby is signed for the next five seasons, so the emphasis must be on getting the other three locked up. Now. It has to happen now for Fleury, who is without a contract after a playoff run that puts him in position to earn perhaps as much as $5 million per season. The season began with critics still sniping at Fleury for his perceived lack of progress toward reaching his potential; he then went out and proved he's one of the best in the game. Losing him is simply not an option. Malkin and Staal don't need contracts this summer, but the Penguins don't want to contemplate the consequences should July 1, 2009 arrive without either of them signed to extensions. Malkin would have a long-term offer from one or more teams worth $10-11 million per season at 12:01 a.m. - an offer the Penguins would be forced to match. They certainly can't afford to sit back and take a handful of No. 1 picks as compensation, not when their chance to take a run at multiple Stanley Cups is upon them. It's anybody's guess how difficult it will be to get Malkin's name on a contract extension this summer. We simply don't know enough about him and his personal outlook on how important it is to earn $11 million instead of, say, $8 million. Somehow, it surprised few of us to find out Alexander Ovechkin demanded to be paid more than Crosby; the guess here is that Malkin, on the other hand, likes Pittsburgh well enough to stay for at least another four years at something less than the maximum he could earn elsewhere. After all, he watched Crosby do it and he knows why Crosby did it: because he wants to win. "His starting point was that this is where he wanted to be," Shero said recently of his negotiations with Crosby last summer. "He wanted to leave room for some other players - a great move by him and a first step in trying to keep this thing together." Staal, already a fine defensive center and penalty killer at 19, could command $3-4 million per season. He's savvy at angling his body to win puck battles, and this post-season he made major improvements in the faceoff circle. If the Penguins also re-sign Dupuis this summer at something around $1 million, all this could spell trouble for the Pittsburgh careers of Malone, Orpik and Ruutu, who together earned only a little more than $3.5 million this season but deserve raises. Orpik, the best open-ice hitter among the team's defensemen, seems predisposed to moving on; his relationship with coach Michel Therrien is hardly warm and fuzzy. He has developed into a solid, dependable defenseman and will be missed if he does leave. Ruutu is a big fan favorite and the kind of unnerving player you love to have on your checking line. Malone, who earned just $1.4 million this season, is a great combination of size, toughness and skill, and the Penguins want him back. Malone certainly wants to stay. But it is highly likely he will get some very attractive offers from other teams - offers the Penguins may have trouble matching when they're shelling out so much big money elsewhere. There are a lot of moving parts in the whole picture, and a lot of unknowns. The Penguins as currently constructed can remain an elite team for the near future, but it means spending their big money where it counts the most: down the middle. Penguins Free Agents
Kris Beech 27-year-old center; 11 points in 25 games *Fleury is a restricted free agent; the Penguins have the right to match any offer. |
It took
only a few glimpses of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Marc-Andre
Fleury and Jordan Staal - long before Marian Hossa was even a
twinkle in Shero's eye - for the hockey fans of Pittsburgh to
understand exactly what they were watching. And, once that reality
sank in, they immediately began worrying that the double whammy
of having a nucleus of players who were very young and very talented
would resign the Penguins to watching that nucleus broken up before
its time. 
For
starters, depending on how many personal bonuses were reached
by players, the Penguins were projected to finish this season
anywhere from about $6 million to $9 million under the $50.3 million
salary cap. The cap, meanwhile, is expected to grow to about $54
million next season, leaving the Penguins under next season's
cap by between $10 million and $13 million right off the bat.
If the
cap holds at something close to $54 million, signing those players
this summer could eat up a lot of the Penguins' cap space for
the 2009-10 season, when new deals for Malkin and Staal would
kick in. But it must be remembered that Sydor, Gill and Sykora
will all be coming off their current contracts - totaling about
$7 million - in the summer of 2009. | Copyright © 1997-2008 Pittsburgh Sports Report [PSR] |